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Let It Be is the third studio album by American punk rock band The Replacements, released in October 1984 by Twin Tone Records.

The band had grown tired of playing loud and fast exclusively by the time of their 1983 album Hootenanny and decided to write songs that were, according to vocalist Paul Westerberg, "a little more sincere." Let It Be is really a post-punk album with Westerberg's lyrics featuring themes of self-consciousness and rejection as felt by awkward youths, and deal with topics such as generational discontent on Unsatisfied, uncontrollable arousal on Gary's Got A Boner, and amateurish sexuality on Sixteen Blue.

According to music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the album's coming-of-age theme is aligned between adolescence and adulthood, and unlike many other adolescent-themed post-punk records, Let It Be remains less on the subject of angst and incorporates humor and more varied music.

After the endearingly loud, fast rock & roll of earlier albums, The Replacements took a giant step forward without surrendering their raucous edge on Let It Be. By then, leader Paul Westerberg had developed into a first-rate songwriter, capable of soul-baring introspection (Unsatisfied), wry character studies (Androgynous) and frenzied, go-for-broke rock (We're Coming Out).

Let It Be caught one of America's most promising bands at an early creative peak, straddling the line between inspired amateurism and accomplished, deliberate craftsmanship.

For Westerberg, Let It Be was a break with The Replacements' punk aesthetic. Whereas most of the songs on the group's first two albums were speeding, hard-driven rock, there's an amazing range to Let It Be. "Playing that kind of noisy, fake hardcore rock was getting us nowhere, and it wasn't a lot of fun," he says. "This was the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs and giving them titles."

Constrained by what people wanted the group to be - the loud, sloppy and lovable Mats, as they were known to fans - Westerberg let his feelings out on Let It Be with songs like Unsatisfied.

"I was not terribly happy," admits Westerberg. "It was just the feeling that we're never going anywhere and the music we're playing is not the music I feel and I don't know what to do and I don't know how to express myself. I felt that one to the absolute bone when I did it."

Westerberg writes about funny little things, like Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out, then fills the songs with anger, frustration and excitement. His voice is great - so desperate when he sings, "How do you say I'm lonely to an answering machine," so sympathetic when he sings, "Your age is the hardest age; everything drags and drags." In Androgynous, he seems to find shortcomings in the whole lot of males in his generation: "Don't get him wrong/Don't get him mad/He might be a father, but he sure ain't a dad," he sings sadly. And in the heavy rocker Favorite Thing, with the band pounding behind him, he screams like an incensed Joe Strummer.

Let It Be, cut at a small Minneapolis studio, Blackberry Way, was the final album in which The Replacements' hell-raising lead guitarist, Bob Stinson, had a key role, and blowouts like We're Coming Out were written with him in mind.

The title Let It Be, of course, came from The Beatles. Appropriating it, says Westerberg, "was our way of saying that nothing is sacred, that the Beatles were just a damn fine rock & roll band. We seriously were gonna call the next record Let It Bleed." The songs on Let It Be were cut quickly and crudely. "We didn't have a producer looking over our shoulder, saying, 'This isn't done, boys,'"Westerberg says. Yet Let It Be has a solid emotional core, and The Replacements' evolution was fitting. "The jump from a wild punk band to one that actually plays songs and has some interesting stuff came at the right time," says Westerberg.